Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

“Yes, you great cosmopolitan people who hate no one, except people like me. You have to have somebody to look down on, I suppose. The Chetniks aren’t available. They’re all in the hills, so you’ve picked us. You write us off as ignorant peasants and think every woman who wears a scarf on her head is a religious fanatic, and every man who prays in the mosque is mujahedeen. Do you think we really want to be here? That we love your city so much we’ll never be able to tear ourselves away from the water lines and these fine rabbit hutches you call apartments, where you sleep in the back so you won’t be hit by the shots coming in through the windows?

“What really bothers you is that we seem to be better at surviving than you. We can make a fire, slaughter a goat, plant a vacant lot with vegetables. The triumph of the peasant, and it drives you mad. So much for the wisdom of the streets.”

“If that’s all it was we could stand it. It’s the attitudes we resent. I’m not saying it was your fault personally, but where do you think this war began? In small towns and villages where people kept alive all the old, narrow grudges for the past fifty years. You were the only ones still worried about finding out who was a Chetnik, who was a Catholic, who was a Muslim.”

“We were the only ones who faced the truth, that’s all.”

“And your truth was that a Serb couldn’t trust a Croat, or a Muslim trust a Serb, or whoever. Was that your truth?”

“You heard the stories growing up, just like we did. About the bastard Chetniks or the cutthroat Ustasha. You probably had an old uncle just like I did who always warned you after his third drink that it would all happen again someday. But in Sarajevo you just went to the cafe and had another cigarette. You put it all out of your mind and let your grandparents worry about history. You were good little Titoists who didn’t just forget the past, you pretended it never happened. And now you’re so shocked and offended that it’s happened again, right under your noses, while you were drinking coffee and talking about Western music.

“But isn’t it funny how fast you’ve caught on. Now you’re as quick as anyone to call someone by some dirty label. How many times have you said ‘Chetnik’ in the last ten minutes. And who needs Chetniks when you can look down your noses at the entire rest of your country. You act as if you are the only people in the world who are suffering, and that everyone is to blame but yourselves. No wonder even the TV cameras are tired of you.”

Vlado saw that tears had begun running down her cheeks, but her voice was unwavering, unshakable in its low monotone that hammered forward like the drone of a court clerk reading a bill of indictment.

“My husband was just like the rest of you, so committed to tolerance and brotherly love that the first thing he wanted to do was take a gun and go shoot every Chetnik he could find.”

She paused, calming herself, sipping again at her coffee, although by now it had gone cold.

“That was his favorite shirt,” she said, looking up at Vlado. “It’s the only one I haven’t been able to part with.” Then her crying broke into a sob. More tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, reaching across the table to touch her face. She stood and walked to the stove, tidying aimlessly. He followed, lightly placing a hand on her shoulder, and she again broke into sobs. She turned toward him, looking into his face as he brushed away her tears, and she pulled him to her tightly, gripping the old shirt.

She leaned her head against his chest and he kissed her hair, with its taste of soap and kitchen smells. Her entire body smelled of a clean, warm bed, sheets rumpled. She raised her face to kiss him, and they clutched at one another. On her cheeks and her neck he tasted the traces of rouge and pancake from the night before. She unbelted her robe, and Vlado slipped his arms inside.

They did not speak. Vlado held her as tightly as he could, and she seemed to gasp. Both were holding on for salvation as much as for desire. Vlado’s mind, still jazzed by the hot water and the bite of the orange, now leapt at the feel of warm skin beneath his hands, the body of a woman, someone who still struggled, who was still capable of rage, of life.

A small voice called out from the bedroom doorway, and she stiffened immediately, pulling away gently but with an underlying firmness. The look on her face, like their first time together, seemed a mixture of both relief and disappointment, though of a different nature this time.

In only a few seconds her transition was complete. She was again a mother attending her children, her face a study in careworn tenderness. She deftly reknotted her robe before turning to face the bedroom door.

“Yes, Mirza.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Then come and have breakfast.”

Mirza, who appeared to be about six, stood looking shyly around the door, as if reluctant to enter as long as this strange man was here. She looked like a miniature Amira, with her slightly upturned nose, and the large brown eyes. Then, behind her, a second small face appeared, a full head shorter, with far different features-blue eyes, blond hair, a broad and jolly face-taken from someone who was lost forever now.

“It’s all right, Mirza,” Amira said gently “He’s a friend. Come and eat. You, too, Hamid.”

She turned back toward Vlado, businesslike but smiling, and said in a lowered voice, “Do you always have such a way with women? Even when you pay double price, or when I’m willing for free, I’m always putting my clothes back on before anything happens.”

But the corners of her eyes still glimmered with the last of her tears. Vlado sat with them through breakfast, enjoying the rare luxury of a second cup of coffee. He began to feel restless, despite his weariness, that he should be planning his next move, whatever that might be. But when he mentioned such a possibility, Amira motioned toward the bedroom.

“What you need is sleep,” she said. “Stay in the back for as long as you like.”

He crawled between the clean sheets, cool but not cold, and pulled a soft thick blanket across his shoulders. Then he curled on his side, sinking easily into a welcome oblivion.

Vlado slept for eight hours and awakened with a plan.

He stepped from the bedroom to find Amira on the floor, playing quietly with her children and a set of crayons. A mortar was thumping in the distance somewhere. The small girl had a doll, and the boy tugged at it, crying to hold it. Amira glanced up from her efforts at mediation to say hello, and his presence immediately silenced the children.

“Good morning,” he said. “Or, good afternoon, I suppose. Thank you for that. It’s the best I’ve slept in months.”

“Laundered sheets and clean clothes work wonders. You should try them sometime.”

Vlado blushed. “Sorry about the way I looked.”

“I’m still not sure I want to ask where you’d been in those clothes. I’ve washed them. They’re drying outside the window.”

Vlado looked about the room, panicky for a moment.

“Your bag’s over by the door,” she said, and he relaxed.

“How long were you planning on staying? I’m assuming you’re not exactly welcome at your house right now or you wouldn’t have come here.”

“I might as well tell you. There are people looking for me. People who you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of. I looked the way I did this morning because I’d been running from them. Swimming, even. I had to cross the river to shake them, and I wasn’t exactly welcome over there, either.”

“Does this have anything to do with the shooting from the other night?”